The Painting on Auerperg's Wall

by Erika Rummel

  When I saw Cereta again, we were no longer teenagers. I had finished my second year at university and was backpacking through Europe on a youth hostel budget and a Eurail ticket that went as far as Vienna. Hungary was still locked behind the Iron Curtain, but I got a 48-hour visa. The three of us, anya, Cereta, and myself, met in Budapest, and again I had the feeling that Cereta kept to a prepared statement, that she was anya’s mouthpiece, literally, because my Hungarian had atrophied, and Cereta supplied instant translations. She was proud of her language skills. She was studying English and German and was going to teach high school, she said.

  It was anya’s idea to meet in Budapest rather than in the small town where she and Cereta lived.

  “She didn’t want you to see how we live in Hollókõ,” Cereta said. She abandoned the translator’s role and became herself once we were alone. “She didn’t want you to see the wretched house we’ve rented, with watermarks left on the wall from the time the river flooded, and the old stove, and the jerry-rigged electric lights.That is what you call it when it is not done in the approved manner, right? Jerry-rigged.”

  “Right.”

  “It sounds like Jerry’s name. Fits him, I guess.” She looked at me slyly. “Do you think he is gay?”

  “Where do you get that idea?” I said.

  Cereta shrugged. “I’m guessing. I’m reading between the lines of Zoltan’s letters. Is that how you say it? ‘reading between the lines’? I don’t think he likes you dating Jerry.”

  “He doesn’t like me dating Jerry because he thinks of the Auerpergs as family. It’s like incest.”

  “Incest?”

  “Not literally,” I said, impatient with Cereta’s attempt to turn our talk into an English lesson. “But never mind Jerry. Tell me about Laszlo.” Laszlo was Cereta’s boyfriend.

  “There is not much to tell. I should have brought a photo of him. I will send it, but he is not photogenic.” She wrinkled her brow, unsure whether “photogenic” was an English word. “He is an accountant, or maybe you say, bookkeeper. He is serious about our relationship, but I am afraid to bring him home and introduce him to anya.”

  “Why?” Because she might turn into a wax doll in anya’s hands and become unrecognizable to a visitor?

  “Because she is so strange,” Cereta said, “and the house is — I don’t know what to call it in English — shabby? She does nothing about the house, to make it better. All she does is write poetry and listen to the radio. She got into trouble with the workers’ council, but even they cannot make her go out and work. They had to give her a disability pension.”

  A poetic bent is a disability, I thought. It disqualifies a person from living in society. When the three of us met in Budapest, anya gave me a book of poems: Versei by Livia Nagy. It was a slim paperback with a shiny cardboard cover depicting a chaotic abstract, an unravelling ball of twine. I wondered about the jacket design. Was it one of anya’s soul paintings?

  LAURA PUSHED AWAY the memories, turned from anya’s soul paintings to the images on her computer. She moved the catalogues on her desk, shifting from the extracurricular thoughts back to the task at hand, trying to establish a neural connection between her brain and the email correspondence on the screen, between her eyes and the descriptive text under the images of paintings — dimensions, medium, provenance. The signals remained weak.

  She couldn’t do any work. It was hopeless. She had to deal with the lies first, her father’s ploy, Nancy’s contradictions. David Finley was bound to be suspicious. A pre-emptive strike was necessary.

  She thought of David at Nancy’s party, looking endearingly rumpled, the type of unstyled man she wanted in her life, with a judiciously set mouth and eyes that promised to calm the waters. Of course, it was possible that the rumpled jacket was only a front, and that David was going for a certain look. Blasé? Undercover? Some of Jerry’s friends were into that, going neutral to confuse the narrative. Perhaps David was gay, in which case it wouldn’t have worked between them anyway. She needed more from a man than companionship with luminous moments. In China, she read, women narrowed down the number of potential husbands by height, blood type, and zodiac sign. Wish it was that easy to establish compatibility, wish I had a list to check off, she thought. What are my criteria anyway? She would have liked to talk to David that night at Nancy’s party and explore the vibes he gave off, but it wasn’t the right time. She was on stage. She had to watch for cues and was reduced to automatic nods. She couldn’t afford to be sidetracked by a man. She reverted to the steely voice she first used long ago when she was vulnerable and had to take precautions against unwanted attention, a voice that had somehow established itself in her psyche, so that she could bring it out any time it was needed. Talking to David, she may have sounded more discouraging than she meant to be. But she wasn’t herself that evening. She was a character in the crazy scheme her father had hatched, a vintage Zoltan scheme that was zany, risky, and likely to fail. She was in a pretend game, but unlike the skits she and Cereta had played as children, this one wasn’t her production. It was Zoltan’s sketch, and the lines didn’t suit her. Or perhaps she no longer enjoyed pretend games. Then, at dinner, David challenged Zoltan over the Something or Other Theory. It was another Zoltan moment. He blustered. He gave David a bully smile and relished every second of their sparring match, she could tell. Thees is why Michelin geeve me three stars. She was rooting for David. Only she couldn’t let on that she was on his side. She couldn’t risk familiarity.

  She picked up the phone and punched in David’s number. There was a good chance he wasn’t home during the day. It was easier to leave a message than to talk to him in person. The phone kept ringing — ten rings before switching to the answering service.

  She got as far giving her name before he cut in.

  “Laura! How are you?”

  She pictured David’s lips, his clean-shaven face, his grey eyes myopic behind silver-framed glasses giving him a slightly weary look, his calming presence, but his telephone voice didn’t fit that image. It was too eager. Laura had rehearsed a speech for an automatic voice, a message to follow the beep. She had rehearsed answers to complicated questions — about moving to Irvine and back again, about cutting short her leave of absence. She wasn’t prepared for the simple question, “How are you?” She stumbled over “I’m fine” and didn’t know how to go on from there.

  “I’ve just come back from Vienna,” he said. “I could have sworn I saw you there.”

  She tried to smile convincingly. They say you can hear a smile on the phone. “Well, it wasn’t me.”

  “She looked like you.”

  She didn’t answer. She was afraid of blowing her cover.

  “Why don’t you come over?” he said into the ensuing silence and pressed on, fighting her hesitation. “I’ll make dinner for us. How about tonight? Are you free?” And before she could answer that question, he stumped her again, adding a teaser: “We could read Brecht, you know.”

  Read Brecht? Is that what they had been doing?

  She could hear a smile lifting his voice, upending the coda of the sentence and turning it into a question ‘you know?’ She hesitated, but there was no sense in putting him off. She would have to face him sooner or later and get past the Vienna incident.

  “Okay,” she said, breathing out half a sigh. “You’re on. When do you want me to come?”

  IT FELT LIKE battling amnesia. Laura looked around furtively, speed-reading David’s furniture. They had met here, she reminded herself. The room was untidy and rumpled like David. This time, she was sure he wasn’t trying for urban blasé, wasn’t deliberately hiding the clues. There was no artful elevation of rubbish to objet. Everything was old except the leather sofa, which looked newish — factory-distressed rather than sat on a hundred times and roughly used. It was bulky and of a colour that didn’t go with anything — hunter green. It was the kind of furniture y
ou might see in a chiropractor’s office or in the lobby of a Super 8 motel.

  “How do you like the new sofa?” David said.

  So it was new.

  She made a noise, sipping air in small quantities, breath turned to sound, something that could be interpreted as yes, no, or maybe, something noncommittal. She had no idea what the old sofa looked like, whether this new one was an improvement.

  “You don’t like it,” he said. His voice was resigned, as if he had expected a whipping and was glad he got away with discreet noises. “Maybe I should have consulted you before I bought it.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you have a sense of style,” he said. “Well, it was in abeyance for a while — after your stay in the hospital — but you are back in form now.” He gave her a hungry look and reached for the armrest of the sofa, as if he had to hold on to something to restrain himself from reaching out and touching her. “The red highlights are back at any rate,” he said.

  What was that supposed to mean? What happened to the highlights at the hospital? She lowered her eyes, moved them out of the danger zone, decided to say nothing, to go for the safety of silence.

  He poured her a drink.

  “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes,” he said.

  She didn’t follow him into the kitchen. In other circumstances, she might have leaned against the counter and said flirty things, or melancholy things — she was more inclined toward melancholy at the onset of an affair. But none of this was possible because she didn’t know what point they had reached in the plot, didn’t know what lines had been said or still needed saying. Had their lips touched? Did she know the feel of his arms, his chest? She was caught in a maze of simulation, weighed down with an oblique version of herself, a woman who may or may not have possessed the object of her desire.

  He brought two plates and set them on the table. He had already put out placemats and wineglasses and paper napkins, and now he lit two candles.

  “Beef à la Campagne,” he said, making air quotes, apologetic because the dish was deli-bought, upended onto plates, and microwaved, but it really didn’t matter. Laura couldn’t concentrate on the meal. She had to multitask — make conversation, listen, stand sentry over the past, take stock of what was in the air, write herself into the unfolding story. There was no time to think about food. She barely touched the meat on her plate. She cut off a piece and manoeuvred it around, the way she wanted to manoeuvre the conversation. When David started talking about Jerry, she felt a momentary sense of relief. At least it was a topic she knew something about, but the same purple cloud of uncertainty was hanging over her head — how much of the story had been covered already?

  “How did you and Jerry meet?” he said.

  That’s a question she would have liked to ask him but was afraid to, in case the topic had come up before.

  “We met in Vienna,” she said, and told him about Opa Auerperg. She dropped the name casually, feeling her way, searching the medium of his eyes, waiting for his reaction. Perhaps she had already told him about Leo Auerperg. If so, she was ready to retreat and say, “Oh, of course, we talked about him before.” She waited until he said “Opa Auerperg?” with a large question mark before she told him of her ersatz grandfather, of his buffalo nightmares, of Thea the maid with the laced-up boots, of the hot chocolate served in gold-rimmed cups.

  “And how does Jerry come into this?” David said.

  Was it possible he didn’t know? That he had been told nothing at all?

  “Jerry was Max Auerperg’s son,” she said. She could hear the unease in her own voice. Did her hesitation carry? Was the tremolo audible to David?

  “You mean, he was Nancy’s — no, wait, that’s impossible. She isn’t old enough.”

  “Her stepson. Nancy was Max’s second wife.”

  “But Jerry’s name was ‘White.’”

  “That was the byline he used for his column. It was his mother’s maiden name.”

  “It’s embarrassing how little I know about Jerry,” David said. “I considered myself a friend, one of his many friends…” he said, as if the number of Jerry’s friends diminished his own importance, downgraded his friendship to also-ran, and excused his ignorance.

  “He always had a lot of friends,” she said, “even as a boy. It was easy to love Jerry. I fell in love with him the moment I saw him.” Privileged first sightings, destined to be permanently lodged in the brain. “I couldn’t help it.” We couldn’t help it. We fell in love with him. She wasn’t sure whether to bring Cereta into this, whether to let David know about her sister now or weave her name into the story later. She was afraid of saying her name and unleashing a ghost, allowing Cereta to play shadow games in David’s mind.

  “I did all the talking,” David said. “That’s why I never got to know Jerry. I was terribly needy when I met him. It was the time after Elaine — my wife — left me. I was looking for an antidote, a cure for depression, so I took up jogging. I wanted a jogger’s high, a breakthrough into joy, or failing that, the early morning camaraderie among people doing stretches on the boardwalk.”

  He looked at Laura hoping she would understand, but unsure he was explaining it the right way.

  “That’s where we met, Jerry and I,” he said. “On the boardwalk. We started talking in-between knee lifts and butt kicks. At first, it was hard for me to make conversation. I couldn’t look into people’s faces. So, I kept my head down and concentrated on my legs.”

  He had concentrated on the rhythm, on synchronizing the bending of his knees and the opening of his lips to expel words, any words, about the weather, the lack of decent food on the pier, the newest gadgets for runners. Small talk was all he could manage at the time.

  “Jerry was in great form,” he said to Laura. “He had enough wind to keep up the joking while I was huffing along beside him. I remember him so well: ebullient, windblown. And I out of shape, stunned by depression. The need to spill came later. That’s when I talked and talked until I was out of breath, and we stopped and watched the seagulls swooping down on a bag of Doritos, or caught up in a current of air, screeching. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘they’re flying backward.’ ‘You wish,’ he said. ‘You can’t go back, don’t you know?’ He was serious that time. But most of the time, I did the solemn talking, and Jerry supplied the light entertainment. You know the loopy humour he could put on, the I-can-blow-bubbles-with-my-spit kind?”

  Oh, she knew that charming nervous energy. His sweet sting. Why was she thinking of him with the mysterious longing reserved for a lover when Jerry had caused her only pain? Why not make room for someone else like David? Pain, she realized, had more staying power than love.

  “I was looking for comfort,” David said, “and Jerry’s anarchic kind of fun dulled the pain. He was playing macho one minute and giving me a limp wrist next. He was all things at once. Being with Jerry was like watching a non-stop cabaret.”

  “He knew how to swivel his antenna, if that’s what you mean by being all things at once,” she said, decoding Jerry’s game, making a beginning, taking the first step on the road from there to here, from Jerry to David. Dispel the myth. There was nothing comforting about Jerry’s receptiveness. He was like a pillow on which your head left no mark. “He was willing to listen and to play along, but he was never comforting. I don’t think Jerry was into providing comfort. Or support. On the contrary…” She broke off.

  Jerry had kept everyone in the dark. His plasticity was faultless, his opinions be-my-guest generic. Laura could never get an answer to the question, “What do you think?” He was waiting for her judgment and smiled it back at her. That’s one thing you could count on: Jerry’s white smile. He synchronized his mood with yours. He was on your side. Disagreement was something he had buried long ago, hidden away under a carapace of inscrutability. He had been hurt too many times because he was different. He no longer exposed his skin,
not to her, not to anyone. He covered himself with layers of other people’s opinions. Jerry’s column was well named: I’m Only Asking.

  “On the contrary — what?” David said, forcing her to complete the thought and fill in the blank.

  “He needed comfort himself,” she said. She thought of Jerry’s pale blue eyes, his washed-out ginger hair, his soft unused hands. You wanted to protect him from seeing or hearing anything harmful, from being touched by sorrow. “He was thirteen when I met him in Vienna — my age, but I instantly wanted to take care of him, look after him, make him my pet. Even later, when he lost that innocent, vulnerable look, when it was clear that he could fend for himself, he never struck me as someone you could lean on.”

  “He disappointed you?”

  “It wasn’t disappointment. It was a misunderstanding.”

  He looked at her kindly. “You didn’t know he was gay.”

  Not in high school, when they kissed and fumbled in the car. Not in university when they set up house together. Not when they stopped having sex, because, he said, he was into yoga and meditation, incense and the occult.

  “For a long time, I didn’t.”

  Didn’t know, or didn’t want to know? Sex started up again in a vertiginous curve. They went from celibacy to sex-shop novelties, dolphin-shaped dildos, Donald Duck-headed condoms and porn videos. Jerry turned into a voluptuary and demanded exotic moves, Kama Sutra positions, cherry knot skills, as if he was daring her to say no. Their sex life became surreal, then dropped off the edge. Silent nights returned after Jerry discovered a passion for workouts, weight belts, barbell cable rollouts, bench presses, computerized bicycles. Biceps on Monday, triceps on Thursday. His arms became muscled, super-ripped, his chest like plate armour.